Outdoor Wood Furnaces

ChickenTender63

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Does anyone have any experience with the outdoor wood furnaces that will provide heat and hot water in your home?

This is a unit that sits outside and you load with wood about every two days from what I'm told. Do they really save money on the heating bill? Do they heat well?

I have a 1500 sq ft house that I have bought on 11 acres. The furnace in it now is an old fuel oil system. I have plenty of timber to cut to provide wood so I won't need to be buying it. It also has an old wood stove in the middle of the living room that I would like to take out and install something like this if the function well.

Thanks for the help everyone.
 

roosmom

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Chickentender63,
My husband built an outdoor wood furnace last year. He picked up a wood stove (not ben franklin type) at the junk yard. He then proceeded to build a small house for it to sit in. We insulated it fully and put drywall in it also. It sits about 15' from the house. He ran the heat duct to our basement and insulated it by building a box around it and using more insulation. He piped it into our gas furnace heat ducts. We use a small motor with an (believe it) r/c plane propeller to move the air.
Our house is normally heated with gas and it costs about (did cost) $1800 - $2000 a yr to heat it at 68 degrees. Well, we all know that there is nothing like wood heat, so for the wood heat we used one heat register and heated the whole house. We burned around 11 cords wood.
This year we were able to get our hands on a REAL outdoor wood furnace, like the one you are talking about. We picked it up for three hundred. We cannot afford new. We have it in place, on a slab, we have all of our wood cut and stacked. We cant use it tho because we need all the extra stuff that we didnt get with it. But I have heard nothing but good things about them. Our house would require us to fill it about once a day. Depends on the stove and your house. We need pex pipe, heat exchangers and water pipe to get ours up and running. As long as the pollutionists dont get thier way. This year we are going to use our home built one again. Insurance companies do not seem to have a problem with the outdoor wood furnaces. They do however have a problem with homebuilt outdoor wood furnaces.
Our neighbors had one intstalled 2yrs ago and they love it. They use it for heat home, garage and large pole building, plus the water they use. Good luck.
 

ChickenTender63

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Roosmom, thank you so much for the info. I have not seen any used ones for sale around here, only new, and I haven't been able to get anyone on the phone yet to get any pricing. I guess they are either to busy installing them to answer, or they just don't care about selling them.

They look like a nice system to have, but haven't found anyone round here that has used one yet. I would at least like to find out how much they run so I can see if I can fit it in the budget.

I plan to do the installation myself as I have the electrical, plumbing and hvac experience to tie it all in.

Good luck with your system.
 

roosmom

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Chickentender63, Without knowing the brand name and how large I know that these systems can run from 3500 up to 8500. That is just for the stove and innards.....that does not include the cement pad it has to sit on. I also do not think the price insludes the piping from the house to the stove or the electrical from house to stove. They are very expensive. That is why we were so glad we found one for the price we did.
 

FarmerChick

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My friend Barb always heated with an outside wood stove. big sucker...plus she was told to build a roof over it to protect it from the weather.

BUT she is about 55 now and they just got rid of theirs (which they had about 25 years....big hole burned thru the bottom, cost to fix way high)---so she installed a heat pump for AC.....she never had central air.

BUT one thing she said, you use TONS and TONS of wood. No kidding....and it requires BIG wood. It is a backbreaking process and they were always, always cutting big trees for big logs for big heat when it is needed. She is not sorry to see it gone at all.........being older now she said the work to stack and haul that much big wood was killing her with her dairy business also......

just kinda 2 sides of the coin cause it requires LOTS of big wood to heat a house thru winter and run the hot water. Just some info from her point of view......
 

ChickenTender63

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I just looked at one a little while ago on my way to town. I guess a distributer had set some next to the road with a sign and phone number.

I was surprised when I opened the door to the burning chamber on that thing. I could roast two good size hogs in there at the same time, and still have room for a half cord of wood. No wonder they say you only need to load the thing every couple of days, a person can only burn a 100 year old oak tree so quick, no matter how you cut it.

If it needs wood that big, I don't know if it's for me. I just had a spinal fusion not long ago, and that make it a little tuff on me to use that big a wood.

I appreciate the info FC.
 

FarmerChick

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I just had a spinal fusion not long ago, and that make it a little tuff on me to use that big a wood.

*****CT---this is where you must be super careful. As much as we want to be self sufficient etc. etc.....our health must come first and play into how far we go and handle the workload. Barb has 300 acres and monster tractors and such. They were not burning ordinary fireplace wood...these were HUGE trees and the logs were monsters..LOL...Barb doing a lifetime of hard farm work on the dairy said when it died she was done.

So always something to think about......I know for me nearing 50 years old and had neck surgery about 7 years ago....everything I handle now has a definite thought about wear and tear on the old body for me..HA HA.....I know I can save money and elec. and resources on that tankless water heater, without having to haul mega wood. So for me my options are to find easier ways to help the resources and the pocketbook..LOL

One thing mentioned here by someone, and I don't remember who, was an outside kitchen. To build a nice brick type set up, with great grill, a warming oven, a real type oven built in etc. etc......now that would be a wonderful thing to have and can save elec. and requires small wood and such for burning. I am seriously thinking of taking on that project, just have to research it more to see what kind of set up I want. I don't know...just the easier projects are what I am going to handle now..LOL
 

ChickenTender63

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The smaller wood like normal size fireplace logs won't be an issue. I know I will always have to watch what I do with my back now, but I can still become self-sufficeint none the less.

I have either been on the farm, or around it most of my life, and while the back does cause a lifestyle change, I refuse to give it up.

I am getting ready to build a small smoke house so I can do pork smoking in it. I have thought about going with the full fledge outdoor kitchen, and probably will someday, just have to go one piece at a time right now though.
 

roosmom

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HMMMM, Ours is not THAT big. I believe they come in different sizes. Or maybe ours is just old. The wood we cut (we expected to use it this winter remember) is 36" long. I am not sure how to size diameter but I would say bigger than a dinner plate by, oh, 2". When I saw that my husband had not split any of the wood, I made sure he understood there was no way I can feed the beast.
But if you think about it (and I certainly have), If the power goes out then you are screwed. there is no way to get that heat to the house. Even now with the one my husband built, if power goes out for more than 6hrs, in the middle of winter, we would freeze. This stove will in no way make you self sufficient unless you have a generator. You would have to go with a gravity heat system, to be self sufficient. Wood heat, just gravity. :)
 

ChickenTender63

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I do have a generator that could easily run that and we are also looking at converting over to solar at somepoint to take us off the grid most of the time.
 
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